It’s difficult to believe these days but 50 years ago the FA Cup final was the one match in which every player at an English club wanted to play. There were stories that some players threw away their chances in the league in order to maximise their chances in the cup. Not so Wolves who in 1960 missed out on becoming the first club in the 20th century to win the coveted double – the FA Cup and League Championship. They failed by just one point. Had Burnley had not won at Manchester City in the last game of the season Wolves would have been champions as well as FA Cup finalists.
Although they had lost their best known player Billy Wright, the England captain, to retirement, Wolves were a team of strong, hard men led by the legendary disciplinarian manager Stan Cullis. At one point their halfback line – Bill Slater, who had replaced Wright as captain and centre half, Ron Flowers, an England regular who played in the 1962 World Cup finals and was a member of the the 1966 winning squad, and legendary hard man Eddie Clamp – was England's halfback line. And they boasted the mecurial Peter Broadbent, who had played in the 1958 World Cup finals, and was kept out of the international team by the captain Johnny Haynes.
Blackburn Rovers were not as successful but they included Ronnie Clayton (35 caps for England) and Bryan Douglas who won one more.
Author Mark Metcalf spoke to the men who played in the final as well as others who made their mark as their teams perished along the way.